Yet Another Opinion About The Celluloid Closet: By Jackson DiCarlo

    
    The Celluloid Closet is an enlightening telling of the history of queer representation in film. It highlights the many queer archetypes and tropes up until the 1990s. It's a fascinating story that I'd bet many haven't heard before. The great lengths queers had to go through to appear on film, and if they even did, what dreadful stereotypes they'd have to fill. These forms of representation vary greatly as well, ranging from over the top sissys to monstrous vampires. What I found most disheartening however was the consistent theme of depression and self loathing within queer characters. The film showed clip after clip of queer characters hating themselves because of who they are, often leading to abuse from other characters or even suicide. I can't imagine being part of a marginalized group and only seeing narratives in which the characters are treated like that. I really enjoyed the interviews with people from several different areas of filmmaking. I appreciated that it had writers, actors, directors, and so on instead of just some shmucks who studied it. It was fun seeing an interview with the actors intercut with footage from them from years ago. 

    The film does an excellent job of showing the progression of queer representation, going from comic relief or monstrous characters to relatable protagonists. The film came out in the mid 90s, and as such, is a smidge dated for 2021. I'd be really interested in seeing what happens from there. A The Celluloid Closet 2 would be pretty interesting, and I'd hope pretty successful. I look forward to viewing more films by or about queer people now that I've got a better understanding of it's history.

Two Days & One In-Class Discussion Later

    I mentioned in my original thoughts that I'd like to see a sequel to the movie that covers queer representation from the 90s on, and I think I'd like to see that now more than ever. In our class discussion we were asked "what was our first queer character?" Many had examples of queer or queer coded characters from books, movies, or shows they'd seen growing up. Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with one. I hadn't actually considered just how nonexistent queer characters were in the media I'd seen. This wasn't out of choice on my part, but just sheer lack of inclusion. I thought more about characters in recent years I've seen, but I was only able to think of a few flimsy examples. The characters I thought of were queer in one of two ways:

1) The Queer: That's who they are. Gay or lesbian. Other personality traits are nonexistent

2) The Last Minute Queer: Someone who was clearly not written as queer and labeled as such for inclusivity's sake. Or, if they're lucky, written as queer but no time is given to them or their sexuality outside of mentioning it on their wiki page. 

    It really struck me as odd that such strides were being made to have excellently written queer characters, often protagonists, in media only to have it disappear. I couldn't name you a strong queer character from anything in recent times. That may be the fault of me not branching out, but it's also a result of machine learning. We mentioned in class as well that social media and online corporations track your user data to figure out who you are and what you like, giving them the ability to target you with ads and other materials they think you'll like. Google will show you the information it's collected on you, and who they think you are, your interests, and a lot more you wouldn't have considered. Here's how to view it, and turn it off if you're interested.

    Unless you're actively looking for queer representation on your feed, you likely won't get it. It's interesting that it's selectively mainstream. Hopefully we'll get more representation of quality queer characters sooner than later in media, and hopefully whoever made The Celluloid Closet will read our blogs and make another one.